


songs to lost lovers (simple and true)

by gabrielgoodman



Category: The Boys in the Band (2020), The Boys in the Band - Crowley (Broadway 2018)
Genre: Character Study, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Period-Typical Homophobia, Post-Canon, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-14
Updated: 2020-10-14
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:54:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27000790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gabrielgoodman/pseuds/gabrielgoodman
Summary: Most of the time Donald spends at Michael’s place is spent either watching or complaining. He is like an artist that way, or a photographer, and maybe if he would have had bigger aspirations as a little boy growing up in New Jersey, he would have become that, instead of ruining his knees before forty by scrubbing floors and blowing men in bathroom stalls and steam rooms.-donald, and michael, after.
Relationships: Michael/Donald
Comments: 5
Kudos: 41





	songs to lost lovers (simple and true)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [owlinaminor](https://archiveofourown.org/users/owlinaminor/gifts).



> prefacing this by admitting that i am not a huge matt bomer fan but i absolutely, _absolutely_ loved his portrayal of donald in the boys in the band. and i've been a _huge_ fan of all of jim parsons's work outside of the big bang theory for ages; that man can ACT and he was wasted on a sitcom. 
> 
> you're ever so full of .... feelings that you cannot let it go? well, i am sometimes! so, here's a little something. very stream of consciousness, i feel?
> 
> yada, yada, I'm not a native speaker and this has been written in one sitting, so apologies for any mistakes beforehand. this has not seen a beta reader (as ususal), so I'll come back to always fix things as we go.
> 
> title: simple and true - sara bareilles

Most of the time Donald spends at Michael’s place is spent either watching or complaining. He is like an artist that way, or a photographer, and maybe if he would have had bigger aspirations as a little boy growing up in New Jersey, he would have become that, instead of ruining his knees before forty by scrubbing floors and blowing men in bathroom stalls and steam rooms. It’s poetic, maybe. Everything unfolding in front of his eyes, and he is merely watching; very rarely Donald offers up commentary, unless it is to reinstate some resemblance of peace, usually destroyed by these _individuals_ he calls friends.

They are all tormented by age or guilt or love or, god forbid, _society_. Each of them has carved out a little corner for himself into which he might fit, which might guarantee consistency or safety, depending on what you long for any given day. Sometimes, it is a stiff drink, other times it’s pills, most times it’s sex; anything to cure them of this sickness called loneliness. The world has conspired against them, naturally, so they take what they can get, and are greedy if need be. Donald knows that. He sees it, in Harold, Larry and Hank, Emory’s flamboyance and even, at times, in Bernard. He sees it, overtly, in Michael, but perhaps only because he spends most of his time with him.

Harold jokes, pensive but cruel, “You two are attached at the hip. Like he’s your _handsomer_ conjoined twin.” Everything Harold says is painfully deliberate, a bow drawn sharp and taut and the arrow aiming for your heart. He never, if he can afford it, addresses Donald directly – to him, it is like Donald doesn’t even exist, and why would he? He doesn’t move as gracefully, he reads, enjoys the arts if he can focus on them long enough, but he is barely a fixture in the starry night of Harold’s orbit; he is, if only, existing involuntarily, a right only granted to him by calling Michael his friend. He abides, still.

When they met at the bar, Michael and him, it was his pretty face that was his saving grace. Most days, he figures that it still is; no one in their right mind would spend more than five minutes around Donald if his jawline wouldn’t cut the way it does, his eyes as bright as they are intelligent, and his smile a weapon worth winning a war for. “They used to launch ships for lesser beauty,” Michael would tell him, snide, one drink too many cursing his bloodstream, but Donald would be flattered, anyway. Of course. Men like him, who crave validation at every corner, wherever they could get it, men with troubled thoughts and a plunging cliff of self-esteem, they bloom if you offer them a quantum of your devotion. Something sweet, a promise of _you are worthy, you aren’t what your mother has made you out to be_.

Donald has no idea how to appease his mother, god bless her.

(Not that she is dead, but he might as well be, to her.)

She could deal with anything, the failure, the many, lost jobs, even the psychiatrist. She could manage it all, long after he ever came out to her, but don’t you dare turn attention to _that_. Her son, a queer, a _fairy_ , a _pansy_. A slacker, yes, and a depressed, drunk whore, but god forbid he is visibly gay, god forbid he’d ever bring a lover home to her doorstep – his value, it is conditional to many people, it seems. Running on borrowed time, apparently, and he is paying by the hour, with cash, or check, or with expectations he could never quite meet. Occasions he could never manage to rise to, always at the bottom of the pool.

There is a safe haven, in all of this madness. Not his shrink’s office, hell no, Lord knows the man he is paying to fix the devastation inside his head, the empty ruins piling up in his chest, has no hand for any kind of comfort. His analytical stare, his ill-fitting suits (always too tight around the thighs and too lose around his shoulders; undoubtedly, he’d be a handsome man if not for his awful sense in fashion and visible lack of tailoring), and the grating noise of his pencil tapping against the notebook in his lap is nowhere near a place Donald would return to voluntarily, if he wouldn’t absolutely have to. Still, doctor’s order, no matter how _en vogue_ it is. Besides, he is pretty sure Larry has fucked his analyst already, once upon a harvest moon, but that is neither here nor there; is there any man that Larry hasn’t fucked yet? It would certainly be a surprise to Donald, who still finds himself quite taken with him. He knows he shouldn’t, and he won’t, but still – Larry made him feel a little less like some reckless fugitive, or an utter wasteland. He was hot, eager, and talented, and the sparks – well, they never quite last, do they?

It is _all_ so very temporary, and Donald is sick of making amends with it.

“You know, if you keep pulling at this thread, the whole blanket will unravel and fall apart. That will have been five hundred down the drain then and we _both_ know how little I can afford that,” Michael comments on Donald’s fingers currently buried in some soft and woolen throw blanket; he must have picked it up in Paris or Venice if the craftsmanship is anything to go by. Donald wouldn’t necessarily know about these things, but he has genuine interest in Michael, so he has learned the inevitable early on.

“It won’t be the first thing unravelling in these,” Donald’s eyes sweep around the apartment, “Hallowed halls.”

Michael rolls his eyes, shooting him a rather impressive glare. It makes Donald’s lips curve up into a smile even if, currently, he feels more like the brick tied to Virginia Woolf as she wades into the Ouse than someone who does _that_ ; laughter, a foreign currency. _Everything has gone from me but the certainty of your goodness_.

“One day, you will have to fall apart in your own four walls, or your mother’s bedroom. Whatever you call home these days, certainly not Studio 54 anymore,” Michael drawls, something southern hidden between the mean vowels, something soft about him that he tries to hide, just like the self-hatred, only less lethal. Donald wishes he cold fix that, could hold Michael until all of his pieces finally fit together and arrange into something blessedly calm, less neurotic, and certainly less angry, violent, and sour. There’s a truth, here. They could fix each other, tape the broken halves back together and maybe form something whole, for once. Donald longs for a version of himself that is less mangled.

Someone who is happier, who partakes more, and isn’t muffled by a storm of doubts inside his own head.

Someone who drinks less, as well, even though he has been doing better.

Like sorority sisters, they pledge their soberness to each other, Him and Michael. Pinky promise, cross your heart and swear to die. Oh, Donald swears, _hopes_ , that he will die, one day or another; every day he is like a swan singing his last song, much to Michael’s dismay.

“What if I want to fall apart here, though?” Donald asks, and his head lifts from the pillow on Michael’s bed, the one they have shared a million times, a million Saturday nights, some more intimate than others, but they both rarely speak of it these days. Donald can’t be Harold and Michael can only step so far out of his head, and when it is all quiet and New York slowly finds refuge in the dark of the night, it is only wandering hands that alight this space up the stairs. Sacred, that’s what it feels like, whenever it happens; there is a fondness Michael sparks inside of him that only exists within the confines of this bed and this apartment.

“Well, then you better start paying rent. I’m not as cheap as your shrink either,” Michael retorts, but his hand (manicured, moisturized, delicate) reaches for him anyway, getting lost in his hair, pushing the curls back and Donald closes his eyes on a hum, simple and faint. _You have been entirely patient with me and incredibly good. I want to say that – everybody knows it._

“You want to sleep here tonight, you tired disaster?” Michael asks, and he can hear the smile in his voice, he doesn’t have to look for it; it’s like a pin on a map. There. He can feel it, if his hands would have a mind of their own and would go and look for it, if he would ever be so inclined to, or have the energy to.

Donald’s eyes are a flicker of candlelight as they open. Here, between them, the world is transfixed, standing still, as long as no one barges in to ruin it.

“I told you, the city makes me itchy.” And that’s true; Donald had to leave when it started to feel like he was being judged for merely walking down the street, dissecting every single interaction he had to the point of resentment for who he was and how he presented to the world, when he became convinced everyone hated him and the itch would just not leave, the way it used to. When he began to look at train tracks and rushing cars longingly, as if they were a cure-all, begging for the holy bells of gunshots, car crashes, overdoses. Whatever could make this existence more bearable, get rid of the anxiety expanding his chest and crushing his lungs.

“This is _hardly_ the city, darling,” Michael interjects, “I promise I won’t take you out. All you have to do is lay here and be pretty, the easiest thing in the world to someone with your outrageous face, as much as I resent you for it.”

Donald laughs: maybe, Michael has a point.

Here, there are no train tracks, no car crashes, there is only the smell of sandal wood and expensive cashmere, scotch (for him) and soda (for Michael), and one bed that, in some way, is always too big and empty and longs for company within the sheets, so Donald gladly provides what they both need and Harold never allows to give to Michael, a thing so heavy it would sink such a carefully crafted construction as their friendship.

“Okay,” he says, and he feels a little more at peace with himself and with the world. Michael smiles, and there is no hint of malice in his expression. “I’ll stay.”

He closes his eyes again and surrenders; the watchful eye is turning into the object of fascination, the watched, Michael looking over him like the Statue of Liberty looking over the souls of fugitives, all those hopeful dreamers arriving in a harbor that might or might not gift them safety, a corner in this world. Lonely souls like Donald, who only desire pleasure that comes without obligation and the freedom of cloudless skies, the ease of a lighter soul.

“Don’t be a stranger,” Michael murmurs, leans in, heat radiating from his warm body, and a brush of his lips to Donald’s temple. Donald smiles, fondly, and it does not feel like a farce or the labor of social interaction put upon him by an unspoken contract, one, that everyone has to adhere to one way or the other.

“I said, I’ll _stay_ ,” He repeats, stresses, and the hand is back in his hair, caressing, soothing; as far as he knows, this gentleness is only ever bestowed upon _him_ , no one else knows this part of Michael, and Michael only ever shows it to him if he can tell he is on the brink of losing Donald. Sometimes, it’s tough love, more often than not, but in these few selected moments, it is this: genuine affection. Two men who can love if they allow themselves to.

Michael nods, “Just making sure you won’t leave like a stray cat. I’ll fix you a drink, yeah? You can stay here, lazy dog that you are. Make yourself at home, your toothbrush is on your shelf with the rest of your skin and haircare regimen.”

Donald snorts, “You’re one to talk!”

And Michael, he simply squeezes his ankle with one hand, because he understands. He always does.

“I mean it. Close your eyes for a minute, you’ll be fine. Stay as long as you need. Your analyst will _thank_ me.”

It occurs to Donald, as Michael waltzes down the stairs to his liquor cabinet, the one Donald knows in its entirety for both of their sakes, that Michael is giving him something he never allows himself: To rest his eyes. No perception, no appearance, no judgement, nothing, only the safety of this mattress beneath him and the cranking of the outdated piping and the familiar sound of Michael existing in a space surrounding the both of them.

Only this. Temporarily, it’s bliss.

_If anybody could have saved me, it would have been you. […]  
_ _I don’t think two people could have been happier than we have been._

_V._

**Author's Note:**

> the sentences in italics are quotes of virgina woolf's suicide note to her husband, leonard. 
> 
> hmu on my twitter @ richardrmadden


End file.
